5 essential Smita Patil moments that prove why there’s nobody like her

Among the many nuggets in Maithili Rao’s Smita Patil: A Brief Incandescence, one concerns Girish Karnad in Nishant. This 1975 Shyam Benegal arthouse classic set against a feudal backdrop launched Smita Patil into a film career that nobody imagined would be tragically short and yet, legendary in its scope and influence. Karnad, who is paired opposite Shabana Azmi in Nishant, singles out a scene in which Patil is shown performing a tulsi pooja. According to A Brief Incandescence, that was the moment when he “knew that a star was born.” Rewatching Nishant, the scene barely even regers but Smita Patil, with her raw intensity, smoky presence and natural gift for acting, makes a strong impression nevertheless. There’s another breakout name in this film. A rookie Naseeruddin Shah plays her husband. Besides Shah and Patil who both started out as parallel cinema darlings before cavorting around its more glamorous cousin Bollywood, the cast also includes Amrish Puri, Shabana Azmi, Mohan Agashe, Anant Nag and Kulbhushan Kharbanda.
In this repertory of talent that dominated the Hindi art cinema landscape, Patil was but a comet. Yet, the hory of one of the most seminal movie movements in India is incomplete without Patil’s short-lived genius. The actor died at the age of 31. She has left behind a powerful legacy that we are still discussing, debating and unpacking more than two decades after her death. Her films made space for femin interventions, serving as a template for every succeeding generation of actors. From Tabu to Radhika Apte, all edgy radicals of Bollywood have one thing in common — Smita Patil‘s fiercely independent voice, her brazen disregard for convention and an unparalleled intensity that crowns each of her performances.

These are surprising achievements for an actor who didn’t attend film school, never harboured any dreams of an acting career and wasn’t even perhaps cut out for the movies in the first place given her unconventional looks. That should tell you something about this former Marathi newsreader — she may have grudgingly loved the camera but the camera loved her instantly. Once under the arclights, she transformed herself into “an irresible presence that every actor strives for” and rarely achieves, as her mentor Shyam Benegal remarks in A Brief Incandescence.
(Photo: Express Archive)
Born on October 17, 1955, Patil had trained in theatre as a teenager in her native Pune. No wonder, you can see the intuitive rhythms and intellectual rigor of the stage in her film acting. When Hindi movies beckoned, she opted for parts that sought to realically depict a woman’s “inner strength” (watch her marvelous vintage interview in Prasar Bharti, available on YouTube) instead of presenting her as either black or white, a stereotype much favoured formulaic Bollywood. In a fleeting but highly versatile career full of authentic magic and hypnotic rootedness, she aced roles that would have been every actor’s dream — Bhumika’s vulnerable but resilient actress Usha, Jait Re Jait’s firebrand tribal who wears desire on her sleeve, Mirch Masala’s rebellious Sonbai, Manthan’s fey Bindu and her touching if unspoken bond with a veterinarian who hopes to bring white revolution to her Gujarati village riven caste-based politics, Gaman’s Khairun who waits endlessly for her migrant husband, Chakra’s hard-hitting portrait of a young mother in Bombay’s dingy slum, Ardh Satya’s sensitive professor torn between her love for a cop (Om Puri) and her reservations about police brutality and corruption, Umbartha’s Sulabha who has to overcome her family’s objection to pursue a career outside marriage, Bazaar’s haunting Najma and Arth’s other woman, to name just a few.
Any writer would be in a dilemma if he/she were asked to pick the ultimate Smita Patil compilation in a filmography packed with such unforgettable roles. But here are five of our favourite Smita Patil cinematic moments that provide a window to her potent combination of unstudied intensity and endearing charm.
Bhumika’s (1977) climax: Usha’s daughter confesses that she’s pregnant
(Photo: Express Archive)
Smita Patil plays an actress, Usha, whose personal life is a mess. Trying to escape an abusive marriage (‘common man’ Amol Palekar in a splendid anti-hero turn), she takes refuge in a series of relationships that end in conflict. Yet, there is one bond that needs both healing and closure. In a tragic tw, her daughter returns in the climax to tell her that she’s pregnant. Usha’s first instinct is to conjecture if it’s a cruel replay of her own life all over again but is soon relieved to find that her little girl is happily married. All that remains now for Usha is to cope with her own gnawing loneliness. Not surprisingly, in her biography, Maithili Rao describes Bhumika’s Usha as “the role of a lifetime.”
‘Kya main pagal lagti hun’ — Arth (1982)
(Photo: Express Archive)
It should be obvious to any viewer that Pooja is Arth’s focal point and the film is nothing but an engaging melodrama designed to showcase Shabana Azmi’s dramatic ebbs and flows. But this fictionalised Mahesh Bhatt biopic is equally an ode to Smita Patil. While a selfish take on Bhatt’s tumultuous affair with Parveen Babi and her struggle with mental health on one hand, the movie also mirrors Patil’s own personal life — her much-publicised marriage to Raj Babbar. Patil’s confrontations with screen rival Shabana Azmi — so entwined were these two powerhouses in the public consciousness that “I feel I could well be Shabana Patil and she Smita Azmi,” Azmi told FirstPost.com — are absolutely riveting to watch.
Urban persona versus rural calling in Akaler Shandhaney (1982)
(Photo: Express Archive)
In Mrinal Sen’s film-within-a-film, Patil is once again cast as an actress — this time, as a poetry-quoting city slicker who lands up in a village to shoot for a movie based on the great Bengal famine. The meta-narrative more than winks at Patil’s own status as a toast of the arthouse. The gap between Patil’s urbane persona and the rural woman she has to project on screen is brought into ever sharper focus. Early on, Patil gives a colleague an advice that should be a lesson to every aspiring actor — “Act well and people will worship you.”
The ultimate sizzling rain song moment in Namak Halaal (1982)
(Photo: Express Archive)
While Patil’s name is rightly remembered for its contribution to parallel cinema she was also an indispensable part of commercial Bollywood, shaking a leg with Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty among others. Though Namak Halaal is a Big B comic ride through and through — Bachchan’s phunny English “that can leave Angrez behind” is still hilarious to behold after all these decades — Patil’s rain-soaked Aaj rapat jaayein tops the charts in terms of sex appeal. Wonder if the trajectory of 1970-80s Hindi cinema would have been different if only this goddess-in-white had acted in more such mainstream fare.
That haunting freeze frame in the end in Mirch Masala (1987)
(Photo: Express Archive)
This Ketan Mehta masterpiece makes a convincing case for the power of femin hope. Few can forget Sonbai’s (Patil) searing visage in the ending moments after she and the village women have overcome the oppressor armed with nothing but red chilli powder. What makes Mirch Masala’s triumph even sweeter (or chillier) is that it happens to be the great performer’s swan song. Patil died due to childbirth complications in 1986. What a pity! The loss is ours.